Why We Should Share Books

Helping others is important. You know that. Writers are one group that we can all help. Many of their new followers and readers come from the recommendations of others. A lot of work goes into writing, giving each of us the responsibility to share books with others.

Book sales, especially on online sites like Amazon, are largely predicated by the reviews left by readers. If you are not in the habit of writing book reviews, please start today. Even a one or two sentence review can do much to help a writer.

Books are amazing things. They can take you to lands you have never seen, take you forward or backward in time, and bring inanimate objects to life. You laugh with them and cry with them. They become part of you. Some change you forever.

“You gave me peace of mind.”

Years ago, I leant my copy to a very dear, older friend of mine. It is a frequent occurrence in my life to share books with others. As a result, I often forget what books I shared with each person.

This book touched my friend. Let me tell you how this book came back up in conversation so many years later.

Picture it: Cicily, 1943. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Seriously, picture two older women in Home Depot. One is 90 and going blind. The other is her unwell 60-year-old daughter. They were trying to buy a dishwasher.

…nefarious and unscrupulous…

Two nefarious and unscrupulous men approached them, all smiles, wanting to do their good deed for the day. They offered to help the women pick out a new dishwasher and to even deliver and install it.

The women were overjoyed by the offer. They knew they would have to pay someone to do those very things, so this sounded like a Godsend to them.

As a result, the two men did deliver the dishwasher, and they did install it. Incorrectly, I must add, which is something that led to further repairs not long later.

The men chatted up the older women for a while before “noticing” a few “small repairs” that needed to be done around the house. Those small repairs led to the women dispensing almost $12,000, their entire life savings, before any of us close to them knew what was going on.

In true charlatan fashion, the work was never completed, and the men never returned. These two women were left with no savings and repairs that still needed to be completed.

Those of us close to them stepped up and did what we could to finish and fix the work those two men (and I want to use a much different word here) had either started and not finished or had done incorrectly.

A few weekends ago, I went to check on the ladies to make sure everything was all right. The mother, now 92, told me that I gave her peace of mind about their terrible experience.

“I did?” I couldn’t imagine what I might have done to help them. My handyman skills are seriously lacking, and I did not have the means to help them much financially.

I was very touched. I remember now sharing the book with her. When I first read it, I talked about it a lot to all my friends. It was a calm in the storm that I really needed at the time. But I had no idea how it had affected her. This will be a new life lesson learned.

In addition, this experience also teaches me that we can continue to learn and improve no matter how old or young we might be. It was about twelve years ago that I shared the book, which means that my friend was already 80 at the time.

Do you share books or what you are reading with others? If you don’t, change that today. You never know when you are going to change someone’s life with a shared book.

To close today, what are your favorite books to share? Please comment below.

I have friends who are nurses. I have run round to their homes more often than I can remember with a nasty cut, a baby with colic, or other worry. I used to think as a writer I had no practical skills to offer anyone, except maybe I could write a letter to someone’s doctor saying ‘please help this person.’ Then about 18 months ago I got sick, and I spent a lot of time sitting in hospitals and waiting for potentially devastating news. Reading helped me in ways I never fully appreciated before, and i am so grateful to all those authors who made themselves sit down and write their book. Just a mystery or a romance, nothing literary, ground-breaking or controversial. Just something to lift me out of my space of anxiety and into a new and different world. A story to give me a break from the everyday world where things do, sometimes, go wrong.